Tag: Long Read

Four days, a little over £5k in donations, and a team hard at work – that’s exactly how these toilets and taps were transformed for kids in Nepal.

Let’s be honest, we don’t often see the direct impact our charity donations have had, but for the supporters of Child Rescue Nepal, it became super clear how needed the funds were.

The charity has worked in Nepal since 1999, Joanna Bega, the CEO in the UK tells me. All the staff are Nepalian, bar her and an assistant she has to help with the fundraising. 

So what do they actually do? 

Well, their aim is quite simple – and very powerful. “We rescue children who have been trafficked in Nepal,” says Joanna. “ We have a good track record of reuniting them with families and getting them back to school.”

A big part of their work is prevention, working in a Nepalian district prone to trafficking and sending staff on the ground into schools to do teacher training, renew school equipment, and give education boundaries.

“Every now and then, they’ll come back from a visit and say they’ve seen something quite shocking,” says Joanna. 

This is exactly what happened with the pictures above.

“They said the toilets were horrific, sent me a video, and it was just super grim – it was horrible,” says Jo.

Clean and viable toilets and taps are hugely important for children’s education. The charity’s wider work has shown having decent toilets with running water is a big factor in children attending school – and if they attend school, they’re less likely to be trafficked. “Some statistics we’ve had show running water at a school can increase attendance by 30%,” says Joanna. 

In hot countries like Nepal, schools without water suffer. Teachers spend half their time fetching water, and therefore not teaching. Water really can become a huge hindrance, as well as help, in terms of education. This is especially true for girls – if they don’t have decent toilets, they won’t come to school on their period, which is five days lost every single month. “Girls having an education is really important in Nepal in terms of their future employability,” adds Joanna. 

On 4 February, Child Rescue Nepal put out an appeal to raise £5,667 for the new toilet block and taps at this school. Children had been going to the toilets in bushes, not washing their hands, and getting sick as a result. By 8 February, their target had been reached. 

The team shared videos with their donors along the way of the progress – and the money was hugely well spent. “Donations we receive really go on things that make a difference,” says Joanna.

Their most recent appeal was for two new classrooms to be built – a project they’re underway with. 

If you want to do one small thing to help? Sign up to their newsletter, says Joanna, and be the first to hear about their appeals for support to truly make a difference. 

This article aligns with the UN SDG Clean Water and Sanitation and Quality Education.

Out of all the letters in LGBTQIA+, the ‘A’ is one of the ones which often gets forgotten. Still a novel concept to many outside the LGBTQIA+ community, ‘asexuality’ – a lack of sexual attraction to others – is perhaps dismissed the most in a world that revolves around sexual attraction.

Yasmin Benoit, 26, activist, heavy metal fan, lingerie model and cake hater, feels very differently. From a young age, she knew she didn’t feel romantic or sexual attraction in the same way her peers did – but it took until her mid-teen years to discover the term ‘asexual’ on the internet… and even longer to decide if it applied to her.

Now? She’s partnered with one of the largest LGBT rights charities in the UK and is working tirelessly to make a difference.

Combatting stereotypes from a young age

“I was largely unsuccessful in coming out until I was about 22,” explains Yasmin, who had tried to come out as asexual to family and friends before. “And the only reason people believed me that time was because it was printed in a two-page spread in the Metro newspaper.”

Since coming out, Yasmin has worked tirelessly to not only raise awareness of asexuality in mainstream media but also to fight the stereotypes that come along with it.

As a black lingerie model, she already doesn’t fit the stereotype of an asexual or aromantic person – something she’s acutely aware of. 

“The people who are most likely to identify as being asexual in particular … tend to be Gen Z. They tend to be in the UK or the US. They tend to be white,” explains Yasmin.

Even within the LGBTQIA+ community, there are stereotypes about asexual people, though some are a little more lighthearted. “In the ACE community, there’s a whole thing about how if you’re asexual you must like cake,” laughs Yasmin. “Honestly, the food I like the least is cake. I don’t know where that comes from. I don’t like cake.”

Ultimately, her decision to come out as AroAce and become an activist had nothing to do with wanting to air her private life on the internet, and all to do with her desire to make a difference in the world.

Becoming an activist to make a change

“It felt hypocritical of me, as someone who had a platform, to complain I wasn’t seeing any kind of representation out there that I could relate to,” explains Yasmin, of why she became an activist. “My initial motivation was just to kind of throw a spanner in the works and see what I could contribute. I didn’t expect it to become anything bigger than that.”

Once she saw people were interested, she understood why they were interested: because they felt like they needed more voices and they felt like there needed to be more awareness. “That kept motivating me to do it and made me understand just how impactful it can be,” she says.

Charity partnerships for a better future

Since coming out as asexual and beginning her activist career, Yasmin has helped to launch the world’s first official International Asexuality Day, which took place on April 6, 2021. In June 2021, Yasmin won the Attitude Pride Award for her activism, making her the first openly asexual-aromantic person to win an LGBTQIA+ award.

Since then, Yasmin has partnered with Stonewall to launch the UK’s first-ever asexual rights initiative. The Stonewall x Yasmin Benoit Ace Project works to research the problem of ACE discrimination in the UK, in the hopes of making this a better, and more accepting world.

Research conducted as part of this initiative will build a picture of ACE communities’ experiences, needs, and priorities for change, with a focus on employment, healthcare, and education. “Our findings will be launched in a report which will provide a clear set of actions for policymakers, companies, and charities to better support ace people,” says Stonewall. Find out more about the partnership.

This article aligns with the UN SDG Reduced Inequalities.

Picture this: thousands of people queueing up for a club night in Manchester, but instead of having cash in their wallets, they’re carrying bags with tinned food and essential toiletries.

To get inside, you give a minimum donation of five items. Food bank volunteers are on the door collecting everything before people head in for an evening of bass music.

It’s called ‘Food for Thought’ – the night-turned-festival that aims to raise hundreds of kgs in food donations to local food banks, plus send any profits to local charities.

Rich Reason, 40, who has been a promoter in the north of England for 20 years, is the brainchild behind it. His events, HIT & RUN, have gathered steam as one of the most respected bass music promoters in Manchester. But in 2015, Rich wanted to do more.

“Helping others, it’s how my parents raised me,” he says. “A lot of my early memories are doing fundraisers with my mum for the local hospital – I admired my parents, they’ve done a lot for others, and I just knew the need was there.”

Mixing music with purpose started long before Food for Thought for Rich. In 2001, he ran a club night at university, which raised money for African schools. “I’ve always done these nights in the past, but what was obvious to me was that this was needed closer to home,” he says. 

“Manchester has been a good home to me – I think it’s a chance to give back and bring together talented musicians who want to be generous to their city.”

May 2022 was the most recent Food for Thought event, having run it annually for the past seven years. They donated 700kg worth of food and toiletries, £440 in cash, and raised another £4,344 for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).

“It’s just got bigger every year,” Rich tells Smiley News. Originally starting as a club night, the last four incarnations of Food for Thought have been day festivals. 

“The great thing about Manchester all the artists are very community-minded,” says Rich, “and we have people willing to play for free.

“People connect with the idea that they can queue up with pasta, beans and pot noodles,” continues Rich, “there’s a funny image of people in the queue with bags and shopping – a lot of people buy tickets and still bring food.”

An unexpected benefit of running the nights is getting to know the people who work at the food banks, says Rich, as well as getting an insight into their work, their situation, and why these banks are so needed. “Because the demand for them is only getting worse,” he adds. 

“There are more food banks in this country than McDonald’s, which is a frightening statistic,” explains Rich. “In 2010, 10,000 people needed food banks. In 2022, that figure is closer to three million. Everyone is feeling the pinch so much – and these food banks keep running out of food.”

Over the years, donations have gone to local food banks including Salford, Manchester Central, as well as some additional fundraising for the Trussell Trust. 

Will Food for Thought continue? “I’ll certainly keep on doing this every year,” says Rich. Some people are more cynical about where their charity money goes now, he adds, “but there’s no way anyone thinks I’m sat at home on a mountain of baked beans!” 

This article aligns with the UN SDG Zero Hunger and No Poverty.

Cultivating diversity and understanding is becoming increasingly important every day. With an increasing spotlight on issues like trans rights and the Black Lives Matter Movement, people are becoming aware of their station in life and the people around them. 

On the same note, businesses are starting to make an effort to be more inclusive and diverse in their hiring practices and trying to create a sense of inclusion among their employees – no matter their background.

One of the people leading the charge for that type of work is Ashley Brundage, who works and researches diversity and inclusion in the business world.

Ashley is a trans woman and has lived a full life, experiencing harassment, discrimination, and even homelessness. Today, she uses that experience to shape her worldview and work.

“Intersectionality really mattered to me because there were rooms I would walk into to try to find that job and people would call the cops on me,” Ashley tells Smiley News. “I was like, ‘wow, they have a real big problem with my gender difference.’ As a certain gender minority, being a woman of transgender experience, I had to figure out how I was going to gain their confidence and gain their trust in order for them to say yes, we want you to work for us.”

And so she got to work, working to empower people of all different backgrounds, looking for the intersections of the diversity of human experience and how it shapes our experience in the workplace.

“I went way down the rabbit hole because I started realizing that some of my differences already had natural empowerment towards them, like being a white person in America,” Ashley says. “So my race and my ethnicity had some advantages in the workplace, and my career journey but then there are others like being homeless, soo my socio-economic class was affecting me.”

After discovering all this, she got to work on a way for people to lead that would lead to the most equity among people.

“I came up with was a leadership model and a process to support all people to empower all of their differences that they have and that served me really,” she says.

She started a job at PNC Bank and within three years was the National Vice President of Diversity Equity and Inclusion. 

But Ashley kept with her research, eventually working on that and PNC concurrently. When she published her research paper, she got to work on her business Empowering Differences. 

“I work with tons of organizations helping them better understand empowerment, doing a leadership development cohort program,” she says. “And I recently launched my new digital empowerment tracking tool. So in a minute and a half, I can do an anonymous assessment of how empowered people are for their differences.”

The focus is for businesses to hit certain markers in something Ashley calls DEI or diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

She even helps internationally, working directly with multiple chambers of commerce including the UK LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce. Even though she’s a trans woman, she still puts a focus on all intersections of diversity. 

“I address LGBTQ plus issues and bring visibility for the trans community,” Ashley says. “But also my research is about the empowerment of all the differences we have. Of course, I also bake intersectionality into that as well.”

In general, through her work, Ashley wants to help people feel more empowered and more comfortable in their own skin. 

“Ultimately, you put a smile on someone’s face through empowerment,” she says. “It’s the ultimate connection for us as humans and people want that like it’s so much more positivity through our positive framing.”

If you want to check out more of her research please do! And in the meantime be respectful of the differences of the people around you.

This article aligns with the UN SDG Partners of the Goals.